Sabetha
Sabetha is one of the Orphans of the Greenblood, a healer and a fortune-teller better known as the Witch of the Greenblood. History The second child and only daughter born to Roshan, an unmarried healer and midwife, in the year 344 at a time when both the sun and the moon occupied the sky. Azar, mother of Roshan, delivered the babe on the deck of the Sataves, known as the Watcher of the West in the common tongue--named for one of the four great stars--beneath the heavens that foretold of things to come for such a child who was born of both fire and water. Sabetha they called her, christened in the rivers of the land they would never feel truly at home in, washed at the convergence of the Vaith, the Scourge, and the Greenblood and blessed by the Mother Rhoyne in so doing. The rituals, the secrets of their particular kind of healing, are never passed from mother to son. Behrouz, who was aged one and ten at the time of his sister’s birth, knew the disappointment of his sex and recognized the change that overcame his mother and her mother in the instant that she was born. While learning to recognize particular herbs so that he could be sent to forage and gather them, he was never privy to anything more, while Sabetha was never excluded from anything, shadowing both Roshan and her grandmother--who was sought after given her abilities in the arts, for preventive measures, cures, and the occasional guidance that came with other gifts. Azar was hailed as more than just a medicine woman, after all, and was known to tell a person’s fortune if they had coin enough to cover the expense. Roshan had never had the eyes or the mind for reading such signs, but Sabetha recognized them easily from a young age. The stars shifted in the heavens as the moons changed, their patterns remaining constant as they moved within the sky, revealing much if one cared to simply pay attention to them. Tea leaves left in the bottom of a cup might be read, along with the unique lines of a person’s palm. There were the cards of t’Rho and the knuckle-bones of an ancestor who was said to have had dreams of the future--a great woman who foretold of the very journey that brought their people from the east to Dorne. Signs were everywhere, if only one knew where to look and how to read them. And while some revered the women for such gifts, others cursed them for their traditions, their behaviours, branding them river witches and telling tales of them that could scarcely be considered believable. Such women stole babies to sacrifice to their gods, performed perverse rituals in the name of healing or prophecy, and seduced and enslaved men for the sole purpose of furthering their line or plying their boat down the river--the latter a fate that Behrouz was assured of, which only fueled the hatred he had for his sister, an emotion that grew with her age and ability. It was that emotion which led him, at the age of nine-and-ten, to set fire to Sabetha’s bedclothes in an attempt to be rid of her. Some say that the girl leapt over the side of the Sataves and into the Greenblood to seek salvation in the arms of the Mother Rhoyne who doused the flames. Others say that it was the Old Man of the River himself who truly saved her, carrying her upon his back to return her to the women who would cast Behrouz out with the weight of a hundred hundred curses upon him. Even the best salves, however, could not heal the damage that was done. Sabetha would bear the scars of the blood feud with her forever along her left side, the burns encompassing much of her left arm and shoulder, with hints of the burn reaching as high as her neck--though often hidden beneath her hair--spanning as far as the outside of her thigh just above her left knee. The years passed without consequence thereafter until old age finally claimed the life of Azar. Roshan followed her mother to the grave but two scant years later. Aged four-and-twenty, Sabetha now remains as the sole Witch of the Greenblood, carrying on the same traditions as the women who went before her upon the Sataves. Timeline 344 AC: Sabetha was born. 352 AC: Behrouz acts upon his jealousy and hatred for his sister, setting fire to Sabetha’s bed as she slept. 352 AC: Behrouz is cursed and cast from the Sataves and the Greenblood. 365 AC: Azar dies in her sleep. 367 AC: Roshan passes. Family Azar- Grandmother, d. 365 AC Roshan - Mother, d. 367 AC Behrouz - Brother, estranged. b. 333 AC NPC’s Gorgon - A simple man. Pilots the Sataves. * Gift - Strong * Negative - Mute Kourosh - Brother to Gorgon. Assists in gathering supplies and hawks wares. * Gift - Agility